In her fiction, L.M. Montgomery (1874-1942) uses clothing as a tool to explore women's roles during a time when ideologies about women were quickly changing. Montgomery's fiction shows dress being used in order to navigate new roles and negotiate changing power relations during a time of increased visibility for women. This thesis links specific changes in women's lives during Montgomery's lifetime to her fictional depictions of clothing. It investigates the increased presence of women in the paid labour force in relation to financial and emotional independence and autonomy in dress. It also looks at visibility and changing ideologies about sexuality and vanity and how these moral concepts are rewritten by Montgomery to favour attention to dress. It explores the influence of maternal feminism on the nation in the early part of the twentieth century and its connection to fashion, noting a decreased interest in both following World War I.

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dress

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literature

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women

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Changing clothes: female dress and the widening sphere in the fiction of L.M. Montgomery